[vilya]

That's the main thing I use visual mode for in Vim: to avoid having to count the number of lines. From the start of the block you just press 'v' then move the cursor to the end of the block; once you've got the lines highlighted, the yank and delete operations will automatically use them.

[gnosis]

There are actually three visual modes in vim:

  v

  V

and

  CTRL-v

It's well worth your time to learn them all.

See

  :help visual-use

for more info.

[vilya]

Thanks! I knew about CTRL-v but didn't know about line-wise block mode ('V').